My Experience With The Police. They Are Not To Be Trusted.

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

This just shows the current state of affairs in this country. Not all cops are bad, and my dad was once a cop, but they are just more and more out of control.

I'll just paste the letter I wrote to the Internal Affairs Department. I was harassed and accused of something I didn't do while being banned from an entire area.

"To The Internal Affairs Department.
This letter is about the misconduct of 3 Flowery Branch police officers. These 3 officers committed:
Discrimination.
Departing from the truth.
Abuse of Authority
Neglect of Duty

I'm writing this letter to complain/report about an incident with 3 of the officers of the Flowery Branch Police Department. The main one was officer #605 based on the number on the warning they gave me. The officer was about 5'8 and hard short/buzzed hair. I do not have his name however as he did not give it to me. There were also two other officers as well. Officer #605 spoke to me the most and gave me the form I had to sign.
This incident occurred on Monday, December 11th 2017 as I was walking out of a Kohl's department store. The officer stopped me and asked me if I was a recruiter for the University of North Georgia. Something that doesn't even exist to my knowledge. He asked me for my ID and I gave it to him. He said that I was accused of trying to recruit people to a college, which is something I have never even heard of people doing before.
He also claimed there was evidence of me doing this that he reviewed on camera. I told him that this had never happened, but he did not listen. He told me what I was saying was a hypothetical scenario and that they had been trying to find me for approximately 8 or so months and had approximately 10 complaints of me doing this. According to them, 3 complaints were on that Monday they talked to me. They were never clear if most of the complaints were simply me being up there and that they were contacted, or of me trying to recruit people to some college. I am on the move a lot for business so I generally wasn't up there often (I have been there more now that it is shopping season).

I was at the store occasionally in this 8 month time span with no knowledge of this (as no manager ever spoke to me or contacted me of the matter). I have also been coming to this plaza for 10 years I had never had a problem. The whole thing was a complete shock to me. I asked him which stores had told him I was here and he said that he didn't want to mention names as he had trouble in the past before with people complaining about him. Something seemed suspect to me that he was not willing to reveal who even complained in the first place.
It was unclear if the the issue was with me not buying something or just being in the general area. He said to me it was funny I had been there and hadn't bought anything, which is not unusual in holiday season when you are looking around or buy things online. They gave me a trespass warning that they made me sign and banned me from the entire shopping center which was unheard of instead of just two stores. I feel this was wrong and unjust. He also said even if I get permission from the stores to go there again (from corporate or otherwise) that I can't go back to the entire plaza.
I have lived in this area for 10 years and I think that's wrong. How can they simply arbitrarily ban me from an entire area at a whim even if the owner of the store (or corporate) gives me permission to go back? On the sheet itself it says that if I arrive without permission of the owner it would be trespassing. If I get permission by the owner it's still trespassing? This sounds like a violation of how the laws work and the legal advice I received agreed with me.

I'm not sure if it was a racial issue with the department or the officers. I am African American and I dress nicely and I'm well spoken. I have my own business and I've never had a problem doing business with other people or getting along with them. From my experience when something goes wrong you contact the other person while they are there and try to discuss the issue with them or try to get the other side. If all goes worse from there you get law enforcement involved. I don't feel I should be persecuted simply because I am friendly and stand out more than others. Often times many people talk to me first because I'm well dressed and often inquire about what I do. I get this in many places I go and I never thought it was a big deal.

The way the situation was handled I was completely blindsided by this with no prior warning and then I was banned from an entire area I had been shopping in for 10 years with many people I knew and got along with wonderfully. I've even come an picked up things for friends and family members at the local stores and I was there to do some Christmas shopping. This is a very disappointing experience for me and I'm very displeased by the manner of which the police and area handled this. It feels very biased, discriminatory, and unprofessional. It is also hurtful to have to be portrayed in this manner in broad daylight and in public.
It would be one thing if the stores had an issue with me because I can take it up with corporate (and I have based on legal counsel). The banning of me from the entire premises based on a one sided account with no proof of me recruiting anybody and committing no wrongdoing is draconian. This issue needs to be investigated and handled in an unbiased and fair manner. Minding my business in the store and being friendly is not a crime.

I'd like to request a response within 2 weeks so that I can have your feedback and any resolution you can offer. Thank you for your time.

"

[JACK-2]

This is why investing in a good lawyer is paramount. This country is quite litigious and generally always trying to screw people over. Hope you resolve this

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Dec 18, 2017 21:36:14 GMT -5 JACK-2 said:

This is why investing in a good lawyer is paramount. This country is quite litigious and generally always trying to screw people over. Hope you resolve this

Yea it's best to try to do things in a simple and cheap way at first and escalate from there.

I sent it to IA but they just forwarded it to the police department which sucks.

[JACK-2]

You can't make this shit up:


"Whether the police have the right to force your teenage son to masturbate in front of them in order to incriminate himself is a legal question few parents would think they’d have to consider.

And yet Trey Sims’ legal guardians had to do exactly that. In an effort to prosecute the 17-year-old for sexting his 15-year-old girlfriend, Manassas police detective David Abbott obtained a search warrant authorizing him to take “photographs of [Sims’] genitals,” including “a photograph of the suspect’s erect penis.” According to court documents, in the process of executing the search warrant, Abbott took the teenager to a juvenile detention center, took him to a locker room and, with two uniformed, armed officers looking on, ordered Sims to pull down his pants.

After taking pictures with his cell phone of the teenager’s genitals, Abbot then ordered the minor to masturbate so that he could take a picture of his erection. Sims tried but failed to comply with the officer’s orders; Abbott later threatened Sims’ lawyer that, if police couldn’t get a picture of the teenager’s erection by forcing the kid to masturbate, he would obtain a photo of the teenager’s engorged genitals by subjecting him to “an erection-producing injection” at a hospital.

The overcriminalization of personal behavior and qualified immunity for officers is a dangerous mix.

The facts of this case are outrageous, but sadly, they’re not the product of any single bad actor or law. On the contrary, they reflect a criminal justice system that’s structurally broken at almost every level. And the only reason that police never obtained the pictures they demanded under court order from Sims was that there was a massive public outcry after news reports emerged about the case in 2014, and the police let the search warrant expire. (Sims, however, continued to face felony charges for sexting his girlfriend, eventually living under probation for a year before the courts dismissed those charges.)

It wasn’t until this month — more than three years after Sims was taken to that locker room — that a federal appeals court issued a decision in his favor: By a divided 2-1 vote, the court held that a reasonable police officer should have known it was unlawful to order a teenage boy to masturbate in front of him and other officers.

Notably, though, that meant that one judge felt that police should, indeed, have the right to do force children to masturbate in front of them in order to incriminate themselves.

First and foremost, the fact that Sims’ initial conduct was criminalized at all speaks to the staggering breadth of substantive overcriminalization. The activity for which Sims was charged was a consensual, mutual exchange of nude pictures and videos between two teenagers in a lawful relationship (in Virginia, it’s legal for a 17-year-old and 15-year-old to have sex).

Sexting between teenagers is commonplace, and often an innocuous part of flirtation and sexual expression in the digital age. If the taking of or delivery of pictures were non-consensual, or if one party was of the age of majority, that would be a legal issue to address; for parents, such behavior might well be concerning, if not deserving of some proportionate punishment. But to brand Sims a child pornographer under Virginia law is to say that a teenager’s consensual, (mostly) non-harmful conduct merits one of our society’s most severe punishments and social stigmas.

The criminal law is a blunt instrument and incarceration is an extreme remedy; both are poorly equipped to address nuanced social problems and should be a last resort for the most dangerous antisocial behavior. Instead, they’ve become the reflexive default for any behavior that certain segments of society find problematic.

And the legislative predilection for criminalization is compounded by the judiciary’s failure to insist that the government offer any justification for putting someone behind bars. In the vast majority of cases, the state doesn’t have to show that criminalization serves any legitimate interest, and the defendant is not even permitted to introduce evidence to the contrary.

Further, the obscene invasion of Sims’ privacy shows just how permissive courts are in letting cops search you almost anywhere, in any manner, and for any reason. Even when police have unlawful motives for stopping you — like racial discrimination — a detention is still legally permissible so long as there’s probable cause for something, including minor traffic violations. Alerts from drug-sniffing dogs (i.e.,“probable cause creating” dogs) are nearly always enough for a search, even if such alerts are barely more reliable than a coin flip.

And before admitting you to jail, state officials may conduct an invasive strip search, no matter what you were arrested for (even traffic offenses), and regardless of whether there’s any reason to suspect you have contraband.

So it’s outrageous but ultimately unsurprising that the judicial system’s cavalier disregard for personal privacy, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, has led us to the point that a judge can authorize and police will execute a “search” that effectively amounts to the sexual assault of a teenager. Whatever the supposed harm of Sims’ underlying behavior, there is no doubt that a police officer forcing a teenager to masturbate in front of armed adults under threat of a frightening medical procedure is vastly worse than a teenager consensually sexting his girlfriend.

And the difficulty that Sims has faced in vindicating his constitutional rights shows how police operate with almost no accountability for their actions. Following his ordeal, Sims filed a civil rights lawsuit against Abbott, arguing that his “search” violated his right of privacy under the Fourth Amendment. Incredibly, the district court dismissed Sims’ complaint, finding that the detective was entitled to “qualified immunity” for his actions. In other words, even assuming that ordering a teenager to masturbate in front of the police was unlawful, the law was not “clearly established” enough for Abbott to know for sure that it was unlawful.

In qualified immunity doctrine, “clearly established law” usually requires not just a clear legal rule, but a prior case with functionally similar facts. The perverse result of this standard is that police will get immunity in the most egregious cases, precisely for the reason that the most extreme kind of misconduct is less likely to have occurred in the past.

The Fourth Circuit did reverse this dismissal and permit Sims’ case to proceed, but even that was a close call. The panel decision was 2-1; the argument made in the dissent, had it been accepted by one other judge, would have granted Abbott total immunity, going so far as to say that Abbott’s actions were lawful.

Sims’ case shows that we have a system in which the legislative branch is permitted to criminalize whatever it wants, with effectively no judicial oversight; police investigations are invasive, unchecked, and can cause far greater harm than the underlying criminal act; and it is nearly impossible to hold police liable for unlawful misconduct. Until we address those systemic problems, we should expect more tragic cases like this one."


www.cato.org/publications/commentary/teen-sexting-case-revealed-how-judges-let-police-invade-childrens-privacy?utm_content=buffer96427&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[The Big Daddy C-Master]

Even worse is they can say the sexting is child pornography and charge the boy and the girl for it.